The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for designing a computer program for business processing without the intervention of a host computer under the support consistently given over the entire process by a distributed computer device such as a work station of a distributed processing system.
Development of a computer program for business processing is typically executed in the following procedure.
First of all, a program designer analyzes contents of object business processing and thoroughly investigates unit functions forming the business and data flow between those functions. Analysis such as normalization of data items is then conducted using an analysis tool. Data items are stored in a data item dictionary so that data may be utilized consistently in all stages of the ensuing development processes. Further, detailed design is performed for the processing, files, and data bases required for unit functions. Further, specifications of a program for implementing necessary processing are clarified, and a source program is produced on the basis of the specification.
Conventionally, there has been a development support tool for supporting the development of such software, i.e., a program, representing the development object business in the form of a drawing and advancing the processing in an interactive manner. There also has been a development support tool for representing the processing, files, and data bases required for necessary functions in the form of a drawing and for defining them in an interactive manner.
The development support tools individually support respective processes of the above described software development. They accurately represent the intentions of the program designer by visually representing processing and specifications required for the object business, serve to exclude the redundancy of data items and maintain the consistency thereof. Thus they contribute to improvement of software productivity.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,185,867 issued to Kishio Ito on Feb. 9, 1993, a method and an apparatus for automatically generating software specifications relating to the technical field of the present invention are disclosed.
Conventional development support tools for business processing program will now be described.
Software production techniques are disclosed in "HITACHI REVIEW", Vol. 68, May 1986, No. 5, Serial No. 772, pp. 29-42 and "HITACHI REVIEW", Vol. 70, February 1987, No. 2, Serial No. 793, pp. 7-14. The Automatic programming systems are disclosed in Japanese Patent Applications un-examined publication number JP-A-4-172529 published Jun. 19. 1992.
Conventional development support tools had individual support functions. In case the entire program was to be designed in a distributed processing computer system, therefore, a development support tool on the host computer was separated from a development support tool on the work station. Consequently, the program was designed while data was being transferred between the host computer and the work station. In the conventional program design, data transfer processing frequently occurred between the host computer and the work station, and the load of the host computer became excessively large, resulting in a hindrance to other business. Or, to the contrary, processing had to be advanced according to the business plan of the host computer, and hence the development work could not be conducted efficiently. The conventional program design had these problems.
Further, program development goes through respective processes so that a preceding process may be continued to its succeeding process. In the above described conventional development support tool, however, a troublesome procedure is required to successively hand over definition information defined in a certain process to the next process. In addition, smooth transfer to the work of the next process was not considered. This resulted in a problem that development work could not be advanced efficiently.
Further, data items extracted on the basis of analysis of the object business could not be used as the input of data analysis as they were. This resulted in a problem that efficient arrangement of data items in conformity with analysis of actual business could not be conducted.